Interest in the English writing system can be viewed as a reaction to the presence or absence of change. The recent burst of interest in the system has undoubtedly been a response to the changes, over the last generation, in how and where printed writing is produced. No longer is it regulated almost exclusively by the house styles of printers and publishers; it now exists in the deregulated written domains of the internet, computer-mediated communication, advertising and elsewhere. In short, the middleman has been removed from much writing, spelling has been freed up and a creative explosion has occurred, documented here by Lauren Squires (Chapter 27) and Tim Shortis (Chapter 28), who also shows how many seemingly new forms have been recycled from the margins of āvernacularā spelling.
This level of change has not been seen since the introduction of print when the reverse was happening and the chaos of the early modern English writing system needed standardising. Phil Scholfield (Chapter 9) examines the process of standardisation which was largely complete when Dr Samuel Johnsonās 1755 dictionary became a standard reference for English spelling. This prescriptive dictionary has since been superseded by the Oxford English Dictionary, a historical and descriptive dictionary which is, ironically, often treated as a prescriptive standard reference, for British spelling at least. Philip Durkin (Chapter 10) sketches the enormous historical variation collected by the OED. American spelling took longer to standardise and D.W. Cummings (Chapter 17) explains how the variation between the two spelling systems is not so clear cut. Florian Coulmas (Chapter 16) argues that new spelling conventions were only possible in America due to its state of independence, unique among English-speaking countries in the nineteenth century. Merja Stenroos and Jeremy J. Smith (Chapter 8) also explain how social conditions affected the development of the English writing system, covering a massive span from Old English through to the emergence of print in the late mediaeval/early modern period. Technological conditions also play a role and Scholfield in turn examines the effect of printed forms on the writing system. This chapter complements Will Hillās history of typography and its relation to English writing (Chapter 25), ends with the emergence of screen print and publicly available graphic design tools. Their availability has helped this explosion of creativity, which Jeffrey Kallen views through the lens of contemporary linguistic landscapes, public forms of writing where one can see hybrid mixtures of written and pictorial forms (Chapter 22). Not since the time of mediaeval manuscripts has there been such cross-modal interaction in English writing.
The stability of English spelling during the time of print has allowed for some very strong traditions to emerge, most notably a tendency for total invariance in the spelling of (almost) every word. This is reflected in the ongoing need for spellcheckers, whose history is outlined by Roger Mitton (Chapter 29). And of course, children must learn how to spell. Nenagh Kemp (Chapter 12) and Terezinha Nunes (Chapter 13) both discuss the acquisition of the English writing system by L1 learners but from two opposing perspectives. Kemp looks at how children develop their ability to spell while Nunes looks at how spelling is taught, comparing the policies and practices of England and New Zealand. Rhona Stainthorp (Chapter 15), on the other hand, looks at the changing contexts in which teaching actually takes places, focusing on classrooms in England, while Liory Fern Pollak and Jackie Masterson (Chapter 14) focus on the challenges of teaching the writing system to people with various kinds of dyslexia. Melvin J. Yap and Susan J. Rickard Liow (Chapter 26) discuss how the written word is visually recognised and processed by the human brain.
Stability gives way to inertia, and the lack of internal consistency across the writing system has prompted several waves of people to try and reform the English writing system. While this agenda is less fashionable nowadays, the need for change is still there, argues long-time advocate Valerie Yule, alongside Ishi Yasuko (Chapter 24). A partial solution to the need for reform is that people may in fact change their speech to fit the spelling, slowly, over generations. An implicit counter-argument comes from Jesper Kruse (Chapter 11) who discusses the vast range of phonological changes which have occurred throughout English since its spelling stabilised. Specifically, his focus is on cases where the spelling represents obsolete phonological contrasts that only survive in a few accents (e.g. wait and weight etc). While these curiosities are fascinating, their obsolescence suggests that changing phonology remains a more powerful force on peopleās speech than the conservativeness of spelling. And of course the more the phonology changes, the more need there is for spelling reformā¦
Iggy Roca in Chapter 5 analyses phonological information which is not included in spelling and must be supplied by the reader. My own chapter (Chapter 4) is its counterpart, outlining the different kinds of information that are included in English spellings. Not only are letters matched to sounds, as one might expect, but they also try to keep the spelling of related words constant, as much as possible. This often includes keeping the spelling of borrowed words and these are examined in greater detail by Simon Horobin (Chapter 7). In Chapter 6, Frank Kirchoff and Beatrice Primus complete the theoretical section of the book, providing a new approach to the core of English punctuation. This chapter also provides a useful starting point for those interested in the different approaches to writing systems taken in Germany in recent decades.
Finally, the relative stability of English spelling in recent centuries has had a series of parallel and alternative histories in the spelling of dialects. Foremost among these is the spelling of Scots whose strong orthographic history is viewed here, by Jennifer Bann and John Corbett in Chapter 18, as an ongoing dialogue between its own traditions and the need to adapt and reform while under the dominating influence of standard English. Raymond Hickey (Chapter 19) presents the stunted history of the spelling of Irish English, first as a mediaeval dialect and later in the staged portrayal of Irish accents in theatre and fiction. Local speech has also developed orthographic traditions throughout North America, and Michael Picone (Chapter 26) focuses on the comic traditions of Louisiana. He discusses many of the problems of dialect representation but also the benefit to linguists in triangulating dialect spelling against putative historical phonetics.
A particularly revealing chapter about the nature of the English writing system is Mark Sebbaās discussion (Chapter 21) of the emergent spelling of Jamaican creole. Like English in the late Middle Ages, Jamaican creole is spelt as a compromise between representing local pronunciation and representing the English origins of words. This tension between sound and meaning is at the heart of all writing systems, as can be seen from the typology of writing systems presented by Richard Sproat (Chapter 3) who allows us to view how English writing compares to other languages. One example of this can be seen in Takeshi Okadaās chapter on the relationships between Japanese and English writing in Japan (Chapter 23).
For those readers new to some, if not all, areas of the English writing system, Vivian Cook (Chapter 2) provides an introductory overview of the central ideas and themes that contributors assume that they are familiar with. Writing systems research is a growing field emerging from the shadow of linguistics, a discipline which has concentrated on speech for a whole century. There is plenty more work to be done.